Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Monkeys Prefer Silence

According to the Acoustical Society of America, monkeys prefer silence to music. Tamarins and marmosets were placed in an apparatus with two chambers, each rigged to play music whenever an anmal entered. In one experiment the musical choices were a flute lullaby (65 beats per minute) and Allec Empire's "Nobody Gets Out Alive" (370 beats per minute). The monkeys spend about 2/3 of their time on the lullaby side, showing that they prefer slower tempos, but given the choice of silence, lullabies, or a Mozart concerto, they spent most of their time avoiding music altogether. A similar experiment with humans showed a distinct preference for music, especially lullibies. The study suggests that some of the acoustic preferences that underlie music are unique to humans.

Obviously they used FOH Mixers for the human trials...